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| Invisible post |
| 08.26.05 (1:11 pm) [edit] |
I had a lovely tale for you to read today but when I posted it, it disappeared.
Wah! Now I'm out of time
What's a Verlaine to do?
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| Books |
| 08.23.05 (5:18 pm) [edit] |
I read the way most people watch television or movies or even breathe air, for that matter. About two months ago I broke my glasses with the most up to date prescription and have been just a little blind. I decided to cash in my newly found optical benefits and go fetch myself a new pair of glasses or two after tearing through "Memoirs of a Geisha" (wow!) and "Saul and Patsy" (jury is still out on that one). I also read my issue of The Sun. Coupled with not very much sleep in the last couple of days, I'm ready to take my eyes out of my head and put them on ice.
I have bad eyes and shouldn't be so unkind to them. My right eye is lazy and crosses when it's tired resulting in me looking like someone has just bopped me on the back of my head with a Cadillac. Just having the eye exam was very tiring. When we finally got to the point of the exam when I was looking through that big thing and the lenses were being adjusted, (clearer or smaller? is one better or two? two or four?) I was so relieved to find that my old prescription is out of whack in the astigmatism department and I need to have a stronger bifocal when the room snapped into focus for the first time in months! Isn't it weird how you don't notice how wrong something is until you get it right? I can't wait for my new lenses. I chose some rimless frames with clear plastic hardware. Since I can't wear contacts, these little invisible glasses are the closest thing I'll get to having nothing on my face.
A little unsettling was finding out that I have pigmentation on my right cornea. This, I was told, can be the result of trauma to the eye from injury or surgery, for example. I've had eye surgery to correct my sight before so I'm not too worried that the other cause of corneal pigmentation is glaucoma. However, no optometrist or opthalmologist has every mentioned this to me before. All the same, I have to have a glaucoma check 4 times this year because my eye pressure was a little high. The aging body does beat the alternative, however, I hate to think about my eyes getting worse than they already are. I've worn bifocal lenses since I was a toddler and don't really have much depth perception. I better learn to play the piano so I can make a living in case I go blind.
Also unsettling was that someone or something put a rock through my window yesterday. It happened while I was out of the house so I'll never know. I just covered the hole with clear contact paper for now. When I told Kristin about my window she heard me say "bra" instead of "rock" (cell service sucks in the Mission, where she lives) and started cracking up that a female undergarment had managed to come in my window. I'm sure! I corrected her and we both agreed it was a fluke accident, most likely, and it's good I wasn't robbed. City living is like this.
Kristin and I went to Trattoria Contadina for dinner last night. North Beach is not my favorite neighborhood to go out in on the weekend because you have to have a reservation to eat a Big Mac but on a Monday night, we were seated immediately. We split roasted stuffed peppers with ricotta, parmesan and asiago cheese in a roasted red pepper and spicy tomato cream sauce. I ordered ravioli stuffed with veal ricotta and porcini in a porcini cream sauce. Kristin had gnocchi in spicy tomato sauce with ricotta and shaved asiago. Of course, we had tiramisu. Damn Good! all of it.
I missed several of the eight hours of sleep I prefer to have last night because my phone kept ringing all morning. You'd think I'd turn the damn thing off! Today was a lazy day, spent walking of the beach and browsing a few books that will become my next focus. For now, I think a trip to the video store is right up my alley
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| Friday |
| 08.19.05 (11:21 am) [edit] |
Me again. Two days in a row seems like old times, huh?
I decided against the new job becuase it is too significant of a pay cut for me to manage right now. In another six months maybe I'll gamble on it. I was offered the position without even formally applying just by mentioning some interest. Very flattering.
Yesterday was my day to be incredibly clumsy. I broke four glasses, dropped bowls of nuts, and banged my head on the cooler door. *twinkly stars everywhere!* Why does that happen sometimes? Our friend Chicaloo has periods of time when she throws herself at the ground with alarming frequency and then other times when she's rather aptly ambulant. I have witnessed Lynne walking easily on train tracks going TO the bar only to fall on a prefectly smooth sidewalk. I can usually work for weeks without breaking anything and then 'ole spastiic' fires up and perfectly good crystal is thrown on the marble floor. It's not that I get in trouble for breaking things, it's just embarrassing. Nevermind that no one wants you to serve them drinks after you've just shattered half of the glassware before their very eyes.
The good of all that is I reacted well to my clumsiness and one of the guests decided I'm adorable and is taking me to dinner next week. He asked in a funny way, too. After drinking and eating for several hours the surprisingly sober man left with his friend and left me with $75. (Cha-Cha-Cha-Ching) Half an hour later he called and told me he'd forgotten his credit card. (he hadn't) We flirted and laughed on the phone until he finally admitted he couldn't think of any other excuse to call. (not to bad for the old ego considering I have to dress like an old couch at work) I hope he doesn't expect me to break any glassware wherever we go.
Lynne just called and she is here in San Francisco and we're going to go have lunch. I'm so excited I could shatter
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| Oh crap |
| 08.17.05 (10:57 am) [edit] |
Oops! I meant to exit my browser yesterday and not post a headline saying "oh crap" Oh crap, I goofed. As electronically challenged as I am, it's a good thing I don't have to operate a hair dryer because I'd certainly be electrocuted. Anyway, with the "oh crap" header, I was planning on typing out a story about a friend who came to visit me, watched "Drop Dead Gorgeous" and spent the rest of her vacation saying things like, "oh crap, I can't see the road anymore" or, "aw crap! that homeless guy smells like CRAP!" all with a heavy Minnesota accent. I changed my mind because the cafe I was in had a weird motor running in it and it sounded like someone was banging out morse code messages from the land of the dead. I went to Lafayette park instead.
At the park I was mauled by a ferociously licking English Bull Dog. I was laying in the grass next to a friend who was checking email and I glanced up just in time to see a stocky jowly dog charging at us. He pounced on the computer, stomped all over my book and licked my glasses right off of my face all the while snorting. It was wonderful. The owner of this dog was ignoring its antics and just walked away. Weird, right?
So that's all the crap, 'n crap except that I'm applying for a managerial position in the gigantic hotel in which I work and the thought of being responsible for all the crap there makes me want to crap. But sometimes you just gotta say, "Oh Crap!!!" and take a.....shot.
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| How much is that potting soil? |
| 08.02.05 (2:45 pm) [edit] |
K-mart at the now extinct Wonderland mall in Livonia, MI is big sloppy puddle of memories for me.
The first time I was ever lost without my mommy happened there when I became mesmerized by the goldfish in the tanks in the way back of the store. As a child I didn't deal with stress very well and I coped with what was to me a natural reaction. I cried hysterically while running around the aisles between the home and garden section and the soon to be belly-up fish department. I understand now that if I had stayed still while crying hysterically, someone would have found me and helped me. Or I would have been whisked away by a big chunk of white trash in an El Camino never to be heard from again. Hey, it could happen.
The first time I was completely shocked was in that same store when my mother gave me some money and told me to go buy two small frozen Coke's, one for each of us. The secret is out, my mother never fed me. (just kidding) In the mid-seventies times were tough and my very sensible mother had raised my brother and I to eat food, not sugar.
We understood that asking for one of the candybars sold at the cash register of every grocery was futile, the answer would be no. So when my little five year old self was handed a couple of bucks to go get a treat I was both dumbfounded and delighted. It was probably one of those ridiculous "Africa-hot" summer days and the thought of walking out of the air-conditioned store to trudge across the miles long, scorching hot black top parking lot to further our torture by climbing into the oven that was our green "chiggida-baggada" Nova. Those frozen Cokes probably saved our lives.
K-mart cashiers wore awful blue smocks and had hair to match. The median age of 75 at the local store was my perception but it was the seventies and the styles then made everyone look so old. Big, hard hair, polyester enought to provide shelter from a speeding bullet and the bad lighting at K-mart flattered no one. The gnarled old lady fingers would whap away at the old fashioned cash registers. "tick-tick-tick, KACHUNKA" repeatedly until all of our goods had been tallied and the subtotal and total keys were hit, causing an earthquake of noise to errupt from the register and a tiny little piece of receipt paper to jut out of the top of the machine. My mother would write a check and hand it and her drivers license to the cashier who would then write all over the check with a pen she took from a necklace that matched the chain hanging from the sides of her enormous glasses.
As I got older, the old lady cashiers were replaced by boisterous black women who carried on conversations with one another as though the customers didn't exist. tick-tick-tick, KACHUNK, "Hey Marvette! did you see LaVonne's man come pick her up yesterday?!" tick-tick-tick,KACHUNK, "Nuh-uh, I hads to go pick up my chile from he gramma house", tick-tick-tick ad infinitum. I don't know who I loved more, the blue hairs or the black skins. I was amazed by anyone carrying on a conversation so loudly in a public place without concern for anyone overhearing and so learned to do the same thing my self. (this is now a device I use to rid myself of annoying people or unwanted advances.) I became obsessed with eavesdropping on the conversations around us as we had our goods tallied and bagged for transport home.
K-mart, with its antiquated manual checkout system was not with out its flaws. Sometimes a price sticker would fall off and the cashier would have to get a price check. A price check always meant most of the afternoon would be spent standing in line as various humans in blue smocks looked at the stickerless item, consult a clip-board with random papers hanging on it, finally shrugging their shoulders and calling another blue smock on the store's speaker system "Marphaday siso prishcex oLINE ONE PLEASE siso prishcexlineone" In order to prevent this torture my job was to find whatever item it was we were to buy and make sure it had a price tag on it. And it was exactly this that I couldn't do one day when we tried to buy a bag of potting soil. The soil was on sale that week and the slippery plastic bags cocooning it were impossible to stick price tags on. While ringing up our items the cashier came across the "priceless" soil and screamed to another cashier several lines away, "LaNeisha, how much da pahtnsole?" To this query came the answer, "HUNH?" And again, "how much da PAHtnsole?" followed by (i know the suspense is killing you) a still louder "HUNH!!?" "How much is da PahtinSOLE, the DIRT! HOW MUCH IS THE DIRT!" " oh that, it's a dollah twennynine"
And so it was and my mother's African Violets thrived in that dirt.
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| Mayonnaise |
| 08.01.05 (1:09 pm) [edit] |
Okay, so I kinda fell into a black hole there. Actually, I quit hauling my computer around with me everywhere in an attempt to be more social. It worked and I'm feeling a bit more balanced. Too much time blogging and reading everyone's blogs left me feeling a bit isolated. Wierd, huh?
Without further ado, I have a recipe for a very disgusting drink.
While working at Arbor Brewing Co. I was frequently asked to make "the most disgusting shot I can" for some kid's 21st birthday. Cement Mixers, (Bailey's and lime juice) Bloody Brains or Alien Embryos, (same as Cement, but with grenadine to make it look bloody) Prairie Fires, (tequila and hot sauce) are some of the stuff I would throw out of the bottles at my disposal. Not being overly fond of serving the drink that makes the new drinker yak like a bukemic after a trip to the all you can eat buffet, I generally made tame drinks and called them something gross.
One day near the end of my 8 1/2 years at Arbor, I had the great idea to make the most disgusting drink anyone has ever heard of the next time I was asked to gross out the barely legal. And so was born "the smoker's cough" Simply pour some Jaegermeister into a small rocks glass and add a half teaspoon of mayonnaise and serve.
In other news, I saw my neighbor's cat jump out the second floor window to pounce on something on the ground. Both the pouncer and the pouncee, what I later saw was a pigeon, didn't fare so well. The cat survived with broken leg.
A man eating a sandwich accidentally spit a HUGE chunk of it at me while he was ordering another White Russian and when I responded that I wasn't hungry he laugh more of his food out of his mouth. My co-worker was stunned into silence for the rest of the evening.
What I presumed was a transexual prostitute turned her head and blew it's nose a la a jogger, that is to say, without a tissue. This was seen while I was walking to meet a friend for a game of pool. Completely ruined my game, it did.
Enough gross out stuff...I'm traveling to MI this weekend to see my family, Chicaloo, and Lynne too! I'm terrifed of the humidity making my hair all frizzy so I'm going to leave my hair at home. I went shopping to buy some summer clothes so I wouldn't die of heat only to buy some nice SF duds. I guess I'll have to shop while I'm in MI. Darn! (I love shopping, in case you couldn't guess.)
My cousin's brother-in-law, whom I've never met, has just moved to SF. I'm going off to meet him and his parents for dinner tonight. I'm leaving early so I have some time to read, "Memoirs of a Geisha" by the ocean. Oh! what torture.....
I finished another "carburetor" story and will stick part of that on here in the next day or two. I promise not to be away so long again.
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